Instructor: Walter F. Smith (X1332, KINSC Link 110)
Office hours: Tu 11-12, Th 10-11, F 9:30-10:30 or by appointment

Meets: MWF 11:30-12:30, KINSC H108

 Syllabus (also available in PDF or Word Format)

Companion website for our textbook, "Waves and Oscillations: A Prelude to Quantum Mechanics", by Walter Fox Smith

Mathematica keyboard shortcuts & physical constants

Course evaluation form

Lecture Summaries
Lecture Summaries (choose a format; PDF files are smaller, Word or PDF files have the nicest formatting):

Links, songs, etc.

Waves Syllabus Song   Chapter 1 Links:   Most of the links for Chapter 1 are on the companion website for our text. Three additional links are given to the right and below.   Short movie giving an overview of atomic force microscopy. Watch the opening segment (which is a couple of minutes long). When the voice-over ends, click the link for "tapping mode". (The movie was made by the Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois.) "Complex Z" Lyrics by Walter F. Smith, tune: "Let It Be", by the Beatles. Lyrics & chords.. mp3 (guitar by Matt McCutchan) Animation showing that the position of a mass on a spring is the same as the horizontal position of a point moving in a circle. [This animation was developed specifically for the text, "Waves and Oscillations: A Prelude to Quantum Mechanics", by Walter Fox Smith.] Chapter 2 Link: Applet about the simple pendulum, created by Prof. Wolfgang Bauer.     Chapter 3 Links: The links for Chapter 3 are on the companion website for our text.   Chapter 4 Links: The links for Chapter 4 are on the companion website for our text.   Chapter 5 Links: The links for Chapter 5 are on the companion website for our text.   Chapter 6 Links: The links for Chapter 6 are on the companion website for our text.   Chapter 7 Links: The links for Chapter 7 are on the companion website for our text.   Chapter 8 Links: The links for Chapter 8 are on the companion website for our text.   Chapter 9 Links: "Coaxial Waves", Lyrics by Walter F. Smith, Tune: Jingle Bell Rock This applet by Prof. Fu-Kwun Hwang shows you how sinusoids traveling in opposite directions superpose to make a standing wave. Try out this applet from Interactive Simulations at the University of Colorado at Boulder that shows the connection between the way the end of a rope is moved and the shape of the resulting wave pulse. For now, you should choose "No End", and set the damping to zero. Although individual beads are shown, the simulation is based on the behavior of a continuous rope. Try out this keen group velocity applet by Paul Falstad. This emphasizes the addition of two sinusoids to produce the pattern of a carrier wave times an envelope function. Start by slowing the simulation speed to about half the initial value, setting frequency 1 a little less than frequency 2, and setting speed 1 significantly less than speed 2. You should be able to see that the wiggles inside the envelope move at about the average of the speeds of the two component waves.   Chapter 10 Links: "Snell's Law Song" Check out this brilliant web page and applet about Snell's Law, put together by Rick Reed.

	Researchers at the IBM Almaden Laboratory used a scanning tunneling microsope to position 48 individual Fe atoms in a circular corral on a Cu surface. The waves seen eminating from the center are due to quantum mechanical wavefunctions of the surface electrons forced into circular states by the arrangement of the Fe atoms. (Thanks to Rob Scarrow for this caption.)